The Taj Palace

WARNING: This article discusses pooping and all things associated with it. If you are faint of heart, don't read on.

For the better part of a week, Kate and I having been staying at a pretty shitty hotel. It's called Maria Lodge and it is essentially 3 floors of a decrepit building. It has a wall A/C unit and costs us only $15 dollars a night, but it has a few drawbacks.

There is no toilet in the room. We have a squat toilet at the end of the hallway that we share with the occupants of the other 12 rooms on this floor plus the manager and his mentally challenged helper. However, each of the other rooms contain 4 Indian men sharing a double bed. Not only does the bathroom smell like what you imagine a squat toilet that 52 people are using would smell like, but the hallway smells as well. It smells like really disgusting smelling feet. You exit our room at the opposite end of the hallway and are immediately struck by the muggy heat that accumulates in the corridor. Then the smell hits you. It is 50m to the bathroom and you try and hold your breath. Of course, then you have to enter the toilet of horribleness. Eventually you have to breathe and you will regret this. For those of you who don't know, squat toilets don't have running water, there is no way to flush. You go to the bathroom in a hole and when you are finished you fill a bucket up from a separate tap and pour that down the hole. This usually doesn't make the poop go anywhere except to float on top of the hole. You are supposed to use your left hand and the bucket of water to wash your bottom, but that just doesn't work if you are use to using toilet paper. Kate and I carry baby wipes with us. The problem being is that there is no where to dispose of these once they have been used. You can't put them down the hole because they will just clog it up. There is no rubbish bin, not that it would matter if there was because India doesn't believe in rubbish collection. So it goes out the window and lands on the roof of the building next door. That's right, for a week Kate and I have been going to the bathroom and then throwing the loo paper out the window. The first time you do this it feels sooooo wrong. After that, it makes you giggle every time! If you only have to pee, you could walk down the Hallway of Stinky Feet or you could just pee in the shower in our room. Guess which one Kate and I did. I don't think that will be a difficult guess. So besides the bathroom issues, the room leaves a lot to be desired. The door doesn't lock from the inside. Kate and I decide to put the shower bucket (nicknamed the security bucket) in front of the door. That way we will hear if anyone tries to enter the room. This would be excellent logic except we are taking sleeping pills at night. I had a whole conversation with Kate the other night and I don't remember a damn bit of it. The other downside of this hotel is the proprietor. He sleeps in the hallway. He sleeps naked. When he does get up, he only feels the need to wear a towel. This is not pretty (see picture at right). The hallway is also where the proprietor cooks his meals on a kerosene stove. The hallway is the only fire exit as all of the windows have bars on them. After a week of this, Kate and I decide that we should treat ourselves to a night at the Taj Mahal Palace. We get up early and pack our backpacks and head to the Taj. The lady at reception tells us they have no rooms, that they are "fully booked." Kate and I don't believe this because the night before we had looked this up on the internet and they had plenty of rooms. We leave very disgruntled. We then call the Taj and surprise, surprise they have plenty of room. We book a room over the phone and then we turn up to the Taj to check in and complain. The lady at the front desk remembers us and upgrades us to a room in the palace wing. Nice try, sweetheart, but we are still taking to the manager. Kate does all the talking. The manager is so very sorry that we were treated this way. So what if we smelled like we had been bathing in the feet of 50 Indian men and looked that we were homeless. We are white and we have credit cards and that alone should get us entry to the Taj. Our room at the Taj has a TV with English language channels, a indoor bathroom, continuous A/C, a clean shower, real cloth towels, sheets, toliet paper that can go IN the toilet, and other such luxuries that we have not had in 2 months. When we arrive back at our luxiourous room, there is a complimentary bottle of wine with a note of apologies. Kate and I drink it with no hesitation. We spend the next day hanging out at the pool and using the spa before we have to catch a plane. I heart the Taj!